


For the Honour of Vorhalas

by Zahri



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Barrayar: canon deaths and slurs ahead, Gen, Goddamn Vorkosigans, My most honourable foe, Pure enmity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 15:45:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17368757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zahri/pseuds/Zahri
Summary: Count Vorhalas, fuming on his way home from the Council of Counts.





	For the Honour of Vorhalas

Vorhalas was furious. The Regent had watched him beg for Carl's life, and turned him down.

Piotr's boy. The spare of a father still mourning his lost heir. That grandson of Xav who had his grandfather's charm and who got away with murder by virtue of being the great grandson of emperors, the last living fragment of the Vorkosigan line.

The man who had run with the wrong crowd as a young officer, who had continually dragged Rulf into bad situations, the sot who Rulf had to haul home out of the stews of the caravanserai, stinking drunk after having consorted with the worst sort of men… that man had condemned Carl for his foolishness.

Baby brother Rulf's fuckup of a friend who had been forgiven again and again and again by virtue of his blood and lineage. Who walked out of every disaster, still alive, when better men (when Rulf) had suffered and suffocated and died.

Who had killed his wife for adultery and then duelled the men involved and had gotten out of it with a slap over the wrist and quickly getting shipped off on ship duty.

That man told him that the law was the law and that, to protect this tiny Emperor, to maintain the authority of the Imperium and the Regent, Carl must die.

He couldn't condemn him for following the law. He could goddamn condemn him for his rank hypocrisy.

Vorkosigans.

Well, by his name, if Regent Lord Admiral Aral Vorkosigan was going to play this on an ethical footing (hah! His ethics! Was that ever a laugh), then that was what they were going to do. Vorhalas would allow him this. But in return, the Regent had better damn well make sure the rest of his positions in the Council of Counts were held to this titan of a standard. Because if there was even a skerrick of illegal or immoral behaviour _whispered_ about… Vorhalas would be there waiting. To remind him of what the Vorhalas family had paid.

***

Then Evon happened. And as Vorhalas abased himself once again, to protect his family from the ever-clearer possibility of returning to a crypto-clan war of a style not seen since Dorca's Unification, he swore to himself.

Let no man ever again find a lack of honour in the Vorhalas line.

**Author's Note:**

> I have an awful lot of feelings about the Vorhalas family, particularly Rulf and the Count.
> 
> I am pretty certain Vorhalas' epic grudge against Aral is equally split between:  
> 1\. Executing Carl and the hypocrisy therein.  
> 2\. Evon fucking up and starting a clan war, resulting in the death of Vorhalas’s remaining heir.  
> 3\. Aral was That Friend of his little brother and kept dragging Rulf into situations he never should have been in, I can't believe YOU survived Escobar when he didn't.
> 
> So I committed fic. Oops. It's been a while since I finished even anything this rough.


End file.
